Gates strategy echoes Johnson's Defense Secretary's in Vietnam, wire says
 Defense Secretary Robert Gates is quietly pushing a new strategy for Iraq that mirrors that of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Clark Clifford in 1968, Bloomberg News reports Thursday.
"Just as Clifford convinced President Lyndon Johnson of the need to change course at the height of the Vietnam War, some officials and military and foreign-policy experts say, Defense Secretary Gates may be gearing up to persuade President George W. Bush George W. Bush to move toward a drawdown in Iraq," writes reporter Ken Fireman.
Yet Johnson did not pull out of Vietnam. America's involvement in the conflict did not end officially until 1973. In fact, the war escalated in the years after 1968, leaving tens of thousands of Americans dead.
Retired Army General William Odom, who served in Vietnam, said he saw "signs" of Gates' strategy mirroring Clifford's.
"Look at his assessments of the state of affairs out there," Odom said. "There is an elasticity to his position."
Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) agreed.
Gates is "playing a prodding role" within the Administration, he asserted, aimed at "trying to prepare the way for a shift of course."
Former Pentagon adviser Kenneth Adelman told Fireman that Gates is likely pushing for disengagement.
"Bob Gates is a very realistic guy," said Adelman, who backed the 2003 U.S. invasion but recently reversed. "He will look at the situation and ask himself, 'Can we win this?' If the answer is, not really, he won't be interested in sacrificing more American lives."
Adelman Vanity Fair that he regretted pushing for the invasion of Iraq.
"I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent," he said. "They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Others tell Fireman that it will be hard for President Bush to shift gears, given the staunch position of his Administration and Vice President Dick Cheney.
"I think [Gates] is going to be careful," Michael O'Hanlon of Washington's Brookings Institution said. "He knows it will be hard for the president to modify this strategy."
Fireman notes that Gates comes from the "realist" school of foreign policy.
"If Gates chooses to weigh in on the side of reducing U.S. forces, his moment is likely to arrive in September, when the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, will issue a much-anticipated progress report on the war; the funding for military operations in Iraq will expire; and Republican lawmakers -- who thus far have resisted efforts to force a change in course -- will return to Washington after spending the August recess listening to war- weary constituents," Fireman says.
"The comparable moment in Clifford's tenure came in early 1968, in the immediate aftermath of the Tet Offensive. In examining a request from his generals to add another 206,000 U.S. troops to the 525,000 already in Vietnam, Clifford became convinced that the war was unwinnable through military means and that the U.S. must seek a negotiated solution," Fireman adds.
Still, the war dragged on for five more years.
Read Fireman's article here.
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